Voracious listener

Slightly annoying

Revisado: 03-15-25

There's a lot of authors that can tell a captivating story in 45 minutes, but this one honestly wasn't. Most of the new characters are annoying and the story is mostly a recap of what the characters did previously. All of it adds nothing to the series and feels very typical for a subscription included audible only production - very forgettable and skipable but it's "free".

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DNF

Revisado: 01-20-25

Too aggravating in the constant abuse of the female main character just because she's female. I'm sure there's a change at some point, but halfway in she's still getting horribly abused.

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Very much like the previous one

Revisado: 01-13-25

If you liked the previous one, this one is more of the same kind of story, just slightly different characters (with oddly similar preferences)

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Great performance, mediocre story

Revisado: 12-10-24

This book feels like audible paid a trending author to just write any short story, so he produced something.
It's neither bad nor great, just very mediocre. The audio book performance is very good and varied with lots of different character voices - the narrator really made the best out of it. I kept listening thanks to her but wouldn't go back for the story.

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DNF - the narration was too much of a mismatch

Revisado: 11-14-22

I stopped listening after about 2-3 hours, because the narration started to annoy me too much and the story development did not deliver enough to keep me engaged.


Why I think the narration is a mismatch:
Nicola Barber's voice is very high pitched and sounds young, which would be great for children's books, YA, and young characters. But this book is supposed to be about warriors and bestial humanoids in the chaos of a post war period, a war that destroyed life as it was.
The narrator's tendency to end sentences at a higher tone and her style of narration makes me constantly think of an insecure teenager telling the story and it gives all characters a very youthful demeanor. Instead of brutalised warriors shouting at each other, it sound like teenagers protesting they didn't get the dessert they wanted.


Why the story did not interest me enough:
I loved the premise, the whole idea of a post war fantasy setting sounded like a fascinating angle.
However at least as an audio book, the author tried to cram too much lore into the beginning of the book and didn't spend enough time to properly introduce additional characters after a few chapters. They simply pop up in an unexpected moment and do not get much of a description.

It's also weird to me how the human main character clearly describes her companions as bestial beings (tusks and an orc like body, not being able to diplay human emotions fully, scary due to their creation as powerful sadistic torturers), yet one of them is apparently her lover? Call me old fashioned, but I'm not ready for interspecial love yet ;)

While I like that Tchaikovsky didn't rely on standard Tolkien fantasy elements (orcs, dwarves etc), I didn't particularly like the setting he created. Expect a lot of cruelty, but with a main character that seems to have an extremely naive motive of now wanting to save a whole race. She doesn't know how, she doesn't know whether it's possible, but she randomly collects a troupe of people who all just tag along for no real reasons of their own. Someone else compared this book to a D&D group, which I agree is fitting.

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Disappointing

Revisado: 07-04-22

I remember loving MZB books as a teen, so I wanted to revisit some. This one is certainly not worth it.

The author constantly explains the characters’ feelings, sometimes stating the same thing up to three times - overall a cringeworthy extent.

Side characters also lack any depth with internal monologues that make little sense (I’m almost wondering whether the author had similar figures in her life that she wished would have reacted that submissively).

Also while I’m all up for modern feminism, this book repeats over and over the message “don’t get tied down in marriage, instead follow your solo dreams because it’ll be worth more”. Again, feels like the author is trying far too hard to get a message across.

One of the main characters also seems a bit too obsessive with her love/adoration for her brother - reeks of some building up incest.

Lastly, I also didn’t enjoy the voice actress performance, it was too often over the top and slightly annoying.

Returned the title after about hours.

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It's okay for a free title but anti-feminist

Revisado: 06-17-22

As a currently free title under audible prime it's totally fine, but not great. I would regret buying it if I had spent a credit on it though. I haven't seen the netflix adaption, so I'm not already a fan of this series nor influenced by the TV series.

The story often feels very cliche with dialogues leaning towards "high school temper but make it fantasy". In terms of world setting there would have been a lot of potential, but it often falls too flat.

Characters are too stereotypical and behave mostly like teenagers, so expect lots of YA elements like protesting for protest's sake, snarky comments and gossip, confused romantic feelings, and a general feeling of not belonging.

I'm not usually offended by outdated roles in books, but one aspect that feels incredibly outdated is how female characters maneuver their love life. I'm actually surprised the author is female, because this book has very strong anti-feminist tendencies: the main character stays in love with the popular boy and just pines for him eternally despite that he rejected her in obvious ways; she also simply follows along aggressive ouvertures from another character when they happen. And the only other female side character of note is as well in a hopeless longterm pursuit of a man that's uninterested in her, so she's as well waiting for him to finally come around and pay attention to her.

Is this really what we want young girls to still think as normal? I hope young readers will understand that these ideas are very one sided and based on the belief that men are the only ones to decide whether a relationship happens. This is an outdated patriarchical idea that's shown in countless movies and books, but one that devalues women's choices and worth.

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I've only listened to the end for Kate Reading

Revisado: 03-08-22

This book was a bit better than the first one of the series, but I honestly only listened to this thanks to Kate Reading's performance. Otherwise, I would not have bothered to buy this.

If you want an overly positive review, look at the "simply great!!" ones, because this one will be focussed why this book is not well written and where potential was missed.

Again, the book seems poorly edited and everything about it feels like a young adult book. There's only one string of events and one real main character that often acts like a teenager, regardless of what age the author assigned her.

My main grievance with the book is how clumsy characters are introduced and how thoughtless the main character Sable acts, yet somehow ends up always at the center of that world's events. The "heroine" is pretty much the female equivalent of an action hero that always storms into buildings shooting at the enemies without working out a plan, just that she approaches all situations with simply talking instead of shooting. No strategy, no clever plans, Sable just talks, and because she coincidentally has a magic ability people believe her and change their own beliefs/enemies go down etc.

A lot of times, characters act completely illogical or even against the main character, and she either completely shrugs it off without much explanation or she simply cannot figure out clear intrigues ("we'll never know why main enemy lied to us to get us here, so I have to go and talk to her"). The author's sense of timing is bad IMHO as well. Sable has plenty of characters available that can help her with magic of all kinds, yet dangerous situations are often filled with wishy washy dialogues, down to the end where she believes someone dies (yet does absolutely nothing other than chatting).

Another stylistic issue are the stereotypical fantasy elements of this series. It's very unimaginative by the author to use all fantasy stereotypes, sometimes even in a single paragraph: dwarves, elves, unicorns, dragons, pheenix, etc. The only stereotype she exchanged are wizards in pointy hats, those are sort of instead special priestesses in white gowns.

And at last: the author spoilers her own story at various points, even in the beginning of the book. It's common for fantasy authors such as Brandon Sanderson to include in world character quotes that hint cleverly at future events, but the author of this book doesn't even try. She just puts it blatantly in the beginning of the book that Sable will become the future queen that solves all issues. Again, this idea of putting the reader to peace with the happy ending promises is another point why this book is only a young adult book in my opinion.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas